


promise

by kaylawritesthings



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Drug Addiction, Drugs, F/M, HEAVY AU SPENCER, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, References to Drugs, gender neutral reader, i love him though, like heavy AU, plug spencer reid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26999353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaylawritesthings/pseuds/kaylawritesthings
Summary: your boyfriend's habits are starting to worry you.plug spencer au originally from jemilys/subspencer on tumblr!
Relationships: Spencer Reid/Reader
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	promise

I had never loved anyone in the way that I loved Spencer. I had only been in a few relationships, none of them serious, but I knew that what Spencer and I had was different. It was real and it was tangible. It was tangible in the way he kissed me, how he held my face like I was made of glass. It was in the way he looked at me, his big brown eyes wide and his smile glowing. It was in the sweaters he leant me, that still smelled like weed and cologne. Usually I might have been grossed out by the smell, but it was so very  _ him _ .

If you had told me three years ago that I’d be dating a drug dealer, I probably would have laughed at you. I was so… _ good _ . That was the only way to describe it. I smoked, yeah, but rarely. I didn’t involve myself with people who did a lot of drugs. I didn’t have anything against them, it was just never my thing. 

I met Spencer through a friend. I remembered the way he had looked at me when I walked into his apartment. Like I was a godsend. My friend was dating one of his friends, so she had dragged me over to his place to hang out with them. It inevitably ended in her having sex in the next room while I awkwardly sat in the living room with Spencer, a man I had known for approximately ten minutes. 

We could hear the clear noises of a bed frame hanging against the wall. We both glanced towards the room and I found myself trying to repress a laugh. Before I knew it, we were both falling into bursts of giggles. Once it died down, he looked down at his blunt and offered it to me.

“Do you, uh, do you smoke?” He asked. “It’s okay if not, I mean, obviously I won’t make you.”

“Sometimes,” I replied. “Not…Not a whole lot, but I have before, yeah.”

“Well, it would be rude of me not to offer to share,” he said with a lopsided grin. “After all, listening to your best friends have sex is quite a bonding experience.”

We’d been together for almost a year and a half now. Spencer was something special. He was kind and gentle and goofy and he  _ loved me _ . I loved him just as much.

I loved him, but sometimes he scared me. Not with the way he acted towards me—oh, no, never. He was the furthest thing from scary I could think of. He never yelled or got angry. What scared me was his habits. I didn’t have any issues with him smoking weed, but the other things, the coke and xanax and the heroin, those fucking terrified me. The amount of times I had wiped blood from his nose after he did a line or held him as he came down was more than any girlfriend should have to do. It was hard.

All this time I had known Spencer, he had always been using and selling drugs. How could I ever ask him to change everything about his life just for my sake? Asking him to detox would be asking him to cut off all of his friends, quit his job, stop doing pretty much everything that he had been doing for years.

It had been bothering me a lot lately, and I was pretty sure that Spencer knew something was up. I didn’t think he knew what exactly, but he would have to be an idiot not to notice the way I had been acting lately. I really didn’t mean to be different towards him, it was just happening. I usually spent almost all of my time at his apartment, but for the past few days I had only been over there a few times, never for longer than an hour or two. I knew that it wasn’t fair to be doing this to him, but nowadays just looking at him hurt. 

I was in a dilemma. I couldn’t keep watching him hurt himself like this. I couldn’t spend every waking moment terrified that he would overdose and no one would be there. I could never ever leave him, I loved him too much for that. But I couldn’t ask him to uproot his life for my sake, a girl who he hadn’t even been with for two years.

Well, the time part didn’t matter so much to me. Just because we hadn’t been together for several years didn’t mean that we weren’t serious. We moved quickly in our relationship--we had said the “L-word” quickly and we basically lived together. But I didn’t know what he would say if I brought it up to him. Would he get angry? Offended? Upset? Would he leave me?

These were the questions that had been plaguing me for going on two weeks now.

I was lying on my couch, watching TV and trying to keep my mind off of the situation. My phone suddenly vibrated, and I grabbed it quickly without even looking at the caller ID. I was constantly worrying that any call that came in would be the one from the hospital or one of his friends, telling me that they found him in his bathroom after--

“Hello?”

“Hey, baby.”

_ Thank fuck _ .

“Oh, uh, hi Spence.” I inwardly winced at my tone. Could I be any more obvious that I was scared to see him? 

Not scared to see him because of anything he would do. I was scared to see him because I was terrified of my own feelings. I didn’t want to see him, have him high, and make myself spiral into an even deeper hole of anxiety. 

I didn’t want to fall even more in love with him when he was testing his own physical limits, when I didn’t feel like he was  _ permanent _ .

I could hear his hesitation. My heart broke a little bit more. I was being unfair to him by closing myself off. I wasn’t just hurting myself, I was hurting him. I hoped he knew that I loved him and would never leave him, but if I were him the thoughts that I’d be thinking wouldn’t be of love and loyalty. 

“I’m outside,” he said, clearly trying to smile. “Come here!”

“Okay, one second.” I hung up and placed my phone aside. I bit my lip and got off my couch, walking over to my door. When I opened it, I found Spencer standing there, a lopsided grin on his face. To my relief, he looked perfectly fine. Well, as fine as he usually did. He didn’t look any more high than usual.

“Hi,” I said, a smile creeping its way to my features. He stepped in and wrapped his arms around my waist, lifting me up with ease as I wrapped my legs around his torso. Usually I would laugh and kiss him, but I couldn’t bring myself to. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell him to put me down, either. I just let him carry me to my bedroom and place me on the mattress.

“I’ve missed you,” he murmured, crawling on top of me. I forced a smile which I hoped looked genuine as he pressed his lips to mine. I awkwardly placed my hands on his face, forcing all of the motions that usually came to me as second nature. For once, I had to think about the things I did with Spencer. I knew that if I didn’t want to touch him he would never make me, so why wasn’t I pulling away? Why was I so fucking scared of hurting his feelings, when I knew he always put me above everyone else?

I could feel my chest tightening, but I once again made myself ignore it. It wasn’t until he was pulling off his sweatshirt and leaning back over me that I broke. I caught a quick glance of his arms. There were dark bruises on his forearms, track marks that littered his pale skin. I knew he wasn’t actively high -- this was not Spencer high on heroin, I had seen that before -- but the marks seemed fairly fresh. 

Before he could lean down to kiss me again, I was inhaling sharply and letting the dam that had been cracking for weeks finally break. He stopped immediately and his eyes widened, looking at me with a mixture of worry and confusion. I covered my face and sobbed, my chest heaving with every shaky breath.

“Shit,” he swore under his breath, still straddling my hips. “What’s wrong, baby? Hey, look at me, it’s okay…I’m sorry, I didn’t know that you didn’t want--”

I let him take my hands and move them from my face. I threw my arms around his neck and buried my face against him, sobbing openly. He hushed me as he moved beside me, maneuvering us so we were both laying on our sides facing each other. I kept my face nuzzled against his chest as he rubbed my back, letting me cry it out.

Finally, I managed to steady out my breathing and the tears began to dry. 

“You need to tell me what’s wrong, princess,” he whispered. His words weren’t insistent or rude, he wasn’t trying to force me into anything I was unsure of, just calm and full of love and concern. “Why won’t you talk to me? I’ve barely seen you lately, and now I come over and you can barely touch me…if you want to break up, I--”

“No, no,” I said quickly, looking up at him. “No, Spence, I don’t want to break up, I just…”

“Please tell me.” He cupped my face gently, wiping a stray tear off of my cheek. I closed my eyes and leaned into his touch. He was so tender with me, his eyes full of nothing but adoration. “Let me help you.”

“I’m so scared,” I blurted out. He frowned as he tucked my hair behind my ears, listening to me speak. “I could never ever ask you to change your life for me, Spencer, but I’m so fucking scared all the time. I know you don’t see it but I have to sit and watch you hurt yourself, I’m the one that has to sit at home and hope to god you’re not overdosing in some bathroom somewhere all by yourself where no one would find you in time. I know it’s not fair, we haven’t been together for all that long but I’m so in love with you and I don’t know what I would do if I lost you--”

“Hey, shh,” he whispered. When I forced myself to look at him, I saw that he looked fucking heartbroken. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I don’t want to make you change your whole-whole life for me…”

“You aren’t making me do anything,” he said softly. “Look at me, (Y/N). I don’t care if we haven’t been together for years. I love you. I want you in my life. I want a future with you. I know it’ll be hard, but I’m willing to do it for you. I want you to feel safe with me. I don’t want you worrying over me like this, it’s killing you. It’s killing both of us.”

“R-Really?”

“Really.” He pressed his forehead against mine. I could tell that, even with the brave facade he was putting on, he was scared. I placed my hand over his, giving him all the reassurance he needed to let himself go. “You’ll stay with me, right? Through...withdrawals and stuff? They’ll be bad, I’ve seen people go through them before.”

“Of course I will.” I pressed a chaste kiss against his lips. “I’ll always stay with you.”

“Even if I relapse?”

“Of course.”

“...You promise?”

“I promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr!! @wlwemilyprentiss :)


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